December 10th-15th,
2010
On my third day of incarceration, a couple more Indians
involved in the rice smuggling scheme were added to the cell. It was starting to get a little crowded. I just kept my nose in my book. Thankfully all of them left in the early
evening and I was back to having the place to myself for a short period.
That afternoon one of my Israeli friends Zohar came to see
me in my cell, the first time she was allowed to come out back. She had some very disturbing news for
me. She had tried to see me the day
before but was denied by Sachin. She
told me that my story of being arrested was in the newspaper. In the newspaper?!? They must be hard up for news in Goa. The bigger and more disconcerting fact was
that I had been charged for possession of 210 grams of hashish. 210 grams!
What?!? There’s a big difference
between the 10 I actually had and 210!
My heart sank in my chest and a wave of nervous adrenaline coursed
through my veins. My emotional
rollercoaster plunged to a new low.
We both agreed that it was time to involve the Canadian and
UK consulates. I needed help.
Zohar had brought some food and water for me for which I was
incredibly grateful but after she left my mind raced a million miles a minute
trying to digest the information she had given me. What a two faced bastard Sachin is! He is a two star policeman, a sub-inspector and
all I can assume is that he overcharged me in order to look better to his
seniors in the hopes of becoming a full inspector with his third star. Very few foreigners get arrested for drug
possession in Goa as most people just pay off the police...stupid me, stupid
me...why didn’t I think to offer those cops some money?!?
At this point my family back in Canada and the US were
unaware of what had happened and I had hoped to be released from the police
station in the first day or two to be able to call them personally but that
wasn’t looking so promising. It was
Friday now and there was a chance that I would be spending the weekend in
jail. Zohar offered to contact them so I
set about providing this new friend of mine with all of my confidentials: my
bank card and PIN, my email and Skype password.
When I worked in an IT department of a high tech company I was required
to use many different passwords for administrative accounts which often had
“hard” passwords, the types that are random alphanumeric characters sprinkled
with symbols. I ended up using my
administrative password for my personal email account as I had typed it so many
times that my fingers pretty much just knew it from muscle memory. What that meant though was that I drew a
blank as I tried to write it out for Zohar on a piece of paper. I needed a keyboard. I asked the police officers if I could
briefly use their ancient computer which was in the next room but they couldn’t
comprehend my request. What did I plan
to do with it? After about five minutes
of attempting to explain the rationale, Sachin finally stepped in and allowed
me to briefly go next door to figure out my password. As I sat at the keyboard I couldn’t help but
imagine the incredulous and flummoxed reactions that my sisters would have
receiving a phone call from some strange Israeli woman in India stating that
their little brother was in a mess of trouble.
Later that day I had two calls, first from the Canadian
consulate in Mumbai and then from the UK one in Panjim, the capital city of Goa. This seemed promising. The UK consulate was going to take the lead
since I had entered India on my UK passport and their office was much
closer. They passed on some names of
lawyers and I told them to contact Zohar to get me a new lawyer. These calls precipitated a comment from the
three star and most senior officer of the station, Uttam, that I had the whole
world checking up on how I was doing. Well
that was fine by me.
The afternoon crept along and with each passing hour my
hopes of this being my day of release diminished. It was even tougher this day as it was a Friday
and so the prospect of spending the entire weekend in jail began to be reality.
I couldn’t help but wonder why I was the only foreigner
locked up for days and days for this minor offense. It would be so easy for the cops to fill this
cell everyday if they wanted to. I
couldn’t help but think of a swim I had in the ocean a few days before I was
arrested. There was a school of
thousands of small fish and then a seagull dove down and gobbled up one unlucky
guy. I couldn’t help but feel like the
little mackerel in the gull’s belly.
Later Partekar, my supposed lawyer, came to see me and
stated that the court demanded a 50,000 rupee surety ($1000) along with the
home and work addresses of three blood relatives. He asked me if I had arranged a local
surety. Of course I hadn’t, how was I
supposed to do that from behind bars with no access to a phone? Even if I had a phone, I’d have no idea who to
call. I was under the impression from
our first meeting that this was a service he was going to provide for me but he
stated that had it been a 25,000 rupee surety, sure, but no one he knows would
want to touch a 50,000 rupee one. I
asked him whether he could call Zohar to pass on this news but he said he
couldn’t. I started to lose it. What good are you Partekar? How are you helping me?!?
At this moment I was taken out of my cell to go to the
hospital for another medical check up to make sure I was still fit for police
lockup. Another guard, Santosh, could
see my frustration and he quietly said to me that we would talk later when he
was on duty. He whispered that he didn’t
like what was happening to me (with the inflated amount that I was being
charged with) and tried to reassure me that in the end God would decide what
was right. Regardless, I was boiling
over on the ride to the local medical center and it wasn’t surprising to me
that my blood pressure was up. A woman
and a young man were also getting a medical exam. I never saw the woman again but the guy ended
up staying in the cell with me that night.
Shawn was a 26 year old Goan and an orphan who had been in
jail for a couple of weeks on the charge of kidnapping. He didn’t look like your stereotypical
kidnapper; glasses, a thin goatee, 5’9 and probably about 140 pounds wet. He recalled his story to me of why he was in
jail. He was living with his girlfriend
who suddenly left him for another man in another state. Shawn decided he wanted to get back at this
guy as he was really into this girl. He
had her name tattooed on his wrist and a few days later he showed me another
tattoo covering his entire back that had her face on an angel’s body! Yikes.
Surprisingly, just knowing the guy’s name, his rough location and where
he worked, Shawn found the new boyfriend’s profile on Facebook. He created a fake Facebook profile,
pretending to be a hot Russian woman which Indian men seem to go crazy
for. He befriended this guy and after a
few weeks of correspondence online he even ended up talking to him on the phone
using some kind of microchip he put in his cell phone that altered his voice to
sound like a woman’s. Not totally sure
about this part of the story either but...
He convinced the guy to fly to Dabolim, the main airport in Goa, for a
romantic encounter. Shawn posed as the
driver for this imaginary Russian woman and picked the guy up at the airport
and along with three of his friends they got the boyfriend in the car, drove
somewhere remote, beat the guy up, took some money from him and dropped him off
on the side of the road. That was it,
enough redemption for Shawn. Great plan,
except the only problem was that the victim turned out to be a talented artist
and was able to sketch the four culprits to a tee for the police and within 24
hours they were all caught!
Shawn and I chatted a bit but then were interrupted by an
officer I hadn’t seen before. He wanted
to take my mug shot as he said that my bail application had been granted and I
should be released the following day.
What? Really? Did Partekar really get the job done this
afternoon? Just outside the cell the
policeman took some pictures with a cheap point and shoot digital camera of me
holding a little chalkboard with my name, age and some other details. I was
finding it difficult to suppress a smile as the news of my possible release had
buoyed my spirits...but I did know at this point to not count my chickens until
they hatched.
Saturday marched along and I killed some time by reading but
also playing chess with Shawn. We
fabricated a set of chess pieces by carefully tearing bits of the old newspaper
that covered our plates of food. Luckily
there was a pattern or 10” squares etched in the concrete floor. We decided to play on a 4x4 grid so each
square was in fact four chess squares so the board was about a meter by a meter
in size. It took a little getting used
to, especially moving bishops or the queen diagonally, but it was definitely
helpful in getting my mind to focus on something different than my predicament.
Four pawns on the top, and from left to right, a rooke, knight, bishop and queen:
I was feeling a bit dirty but wasn’t going to wait for the
off chance that I would be offered another shower from the two faced
Sachin. Begrudgingly I picked up a
quarter bar of soap off the floor by the toilet. In the other little room with the tap I
pushed all of the garbage to one side of the room and proceeded to wash as best
as I could. I even ran the soap over my
shirt and underwear and gave them a good scrubbing since I had a spare one of
each that I could wear while they dried.
Ah, to feel human again. Over the
upcoming days that I remained in lockup I decided to work out in the mornings
for at least half an hour by doing push ups, stomach crunches and a bit of
yoga. I even used a bottle of water as a
small dumbbell to work on my shoulders, biceps and triceps. I had to do many, many reps to feel anything
but hey, I had time. A healthy body
equals a healthy mind.
Zohar called to tell me that she had contacted a new lawyer
and we were going to meet on Sunday afternoon.
Awesome! Time to get some action
happening. It could mean that the whole
bail application process may start over again but if staying some extra days in
lockup means that my longer term outlook is brighter with a good lawyer on my
side, so be it.
On Sunday afternoon Zohar arrived at the station with the
lawyer, Caroline and her assistant Rebecca.
Caroline was night and day different from Partekar and conducted herself
as you would expect a lawyer to act. She
was very straight forward with me and asked some good questions and provided
lots of information. It was reassuring
yet also became disconcerting when she showed me a law book that stated that
possession of 100-1000 grams of charas could be punishable by 6 months to 10
years in jail! My heart sank and my mind
raced. Zohar extended her hand to me to
provide some support and I appreciated that.
Had the charge been under 100 grams, which it should have been, then I
would be facing a maximum of 6 months...quite a difference!
Caroline stated that they would be in court first thing in
the morning to get the bail application underway but that I should expect that
likely I won’t be released until Tuesday.
That’s okay; at least things now seem to be moving in the right
direction.
On my request Zohar brought me a couple of sweaters (one of
which I lent to Shawn), my toque, socks and some earplugs. It had been getting colder at night and with
only a thin blanket I had been waking up a few times in the night due to the
chill. I seemed to be gathering lots of
things in my cell and it was making my stay a little easier. Thanks to a young guard Rakesh, I was able to
exchange my book with another one I had in my backpack so I had more
entertainment and now the warmer clothes and earplugs helped with getting a better
night’s sleep (the guards were sometimes quite loud outside the cell and of
course there’s always the threat of a cellmate snoring). I enjoyed my conversations with Rakesh as
they were on simple subjects with him explaining the nuances of cricket while I
tried to teach him how rugby is played.
He even took a picture of me behind bars with my camera and I snapped a
quick one of him.
Rakesh:
Back in my cell I was once again feeling depressed and upset
about my situation. The gravity of the
possible sentence I could be facing felt like an anvil around my neck. Shawn tried to cheer me up by telling me that
there was no way that I would face that kind of prison time but it was
difficult to pull myself out of this downwards mental spiral. I attempted to read my book but just couldn’t
focus on the words even though it was a collection of true stories of Arctic
explorers trying to find the Northwest Passage and what they went through was
much worse than what I was experiencing.
Don’t think too much...don’t think too much...
That evening, after the standard supper meal, another guy
was brought into our cell. Dinesh, a 34
year old Mumbai resident who runs a dry cleaning store, was arrested for being
the middle man in helping obtain a gun for a friend. The buddy stated that he wanted it for
personal protection but instead used it to murder a guy at a beach in the south
of Goa back four months earlier. It was
a revenge killing with the victim having killed the murderer’s brother. Shawn and I were in the middle of a chess
game so after initially saying hello, Dinesh sat quietly and watched. Over the next few days as I got to know him,
I found it hard to believe such a reserved, religious and seemingly nice guy
could be an accessory to murder.
Monday, my sixth day in the police lockup, was fairly
forgetful except when supper showed up. I joked with the other guys “Geez, I wonder
what’s for dinner tonight?” and was quite shocked when it was actually
something different! It was rice with a
spicy chickpea type curry...wow! It was
definitely a welcome change although it did a number on Shawn’s stomach and I
have to admit that I had a few pangs in my gut in the middle of the night.
Around 10pm I was taken for my third medical check up at the
local hospital. I was much happier on
this check up than my previous since I was likely to be released the next day
and my blood pressure reflected that.
Cows run free in this country and I noticed that they have a cattle
guard at the entrance to the medical building but that hasn’t stop the cats
that seemed to roam free in the hospital as I saw at least two of them. You’d think that the felines can’t be helping
keep the place clean and sterile but who am I to question that.
Although I had a restless night’s sleep thanks to my back
disagreeing with the lumps and bumps of my meagre mattress, I awoke Tuesday in
a positive and happy mood. I had
confidence in Caroline’s ability to expedite my exit from this place. I tried not to be too exuberant in the cell
as I wanted to be sensitive to Shawn and Dinesh who didn’t know when they’re
going to get out. However, as the day
progressed and the hours ticked by my heart and hopes began to sink. After 4pm, every time that I heard the main
police phone ring I peered out of the cell to see if a guard was coming to get
me for a call from either Zohar or my lawyer to tell me that I wasn’t getting
out that day and sure enough one eventually came. Caroline relayed to me that they had
completed the bail application and secured and paid for the local surety but
the whole thing needed to final stamp of approval from a judge so she thought I
would be getting out at 11:30am the next day.
Damn. Ok, that’s
alright...absolutely for sure it will be tomorrow, I can handle one more night.
The inspector Sachin finally appeared, the first time since
I had learned that he had charged me for 210 grams and not 10. I was wary of what I should or should not say
to him. A few days earlier I had
scratched “Watch out, Sachin lies” on the bottom of the wall in the corner
below the security camera but I later rubbed it out. Of course I wanted to tear a strip out of
him. I had earlier contemplated
questions like “How do you look at yourself in the mirror?” and “Do your kids
see the evil when they look into your eyes?”
But I knew that none of this was going to help me, just hurt. I did state “So I was charged with 210 and
not 10.” His response was “Look, I told
you on the first night that it doesn’t matter whether you were charged with
200, 500, 700 or 900 grams, as long as it is under 1 kilogram it’s all the
same. I wanted to make sure that you
weren’t going to smoke again as it destroys your brain. I have taken two people to psychiatric
hospitals for going crazy after smoking charas.” I pointed out that under 100 grams is treated
differently by the courts but it fell on deaf ears. He then tried to butter me and the other two
prisoners up by buying us some samosas that were brought to the cell. What an asshole. I found out later that Zohar and other
friends back at the beach had already nicknamed him “Scumbag”. That was being kind.
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